


Zeroing the Clock

by Jedi Buttercup (jedibuttercup)



Category: Riddick (2013), The Chronicles of Riddick Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Soulmates, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, the dog lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-21 15:27:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12460605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedibuttercup/pseuds/Jedi%20Buttercup
Summary: The colloquial term was 'soulmate', and as spread out as humanity was these days, most people only ever daydreamed about finding one.  Most people, it turned out, were lucky.  Because this was no daydream; it was a fuckingnightmare.





	Zeroing the Clock

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reeby10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reeby10/gifts).



"Boss?" Dahl's voice was stiff with shock over the comm in his ear. "What the fuck did you just do?"

Johns pursed his mouth as he stared down at the strangely monochrome body at his feet. She _knew_ what he'd just done; she'd been watching through her sniper scope while he'd done it. What she was really asking was _why_ ... and fucked if he had an answer.

He cleared his throat gruffly and struggled to drag his thoughts back into some semblance of order. "What I had to do, Dahl. I'm gonna need you to bring me the antidote for the horse tranq, and one of the emergency kits."

"The _antidote_?" she blurted, voice rising with incredulity. "After all that, you're just going to...."

" _Dahl_ ," he interrupted, firmly. There were still two of Santana's crew at the station, and the last thing he needed was Vargas or the kid clueing in and freaking the fuck out before they managed to get everything squared away. "Just do it, all right? Bring a hog, it'll be quicker. I'll explain more when you get out here."

There was a moment of silence over the line, and then a very terse, "You got it, Boss."

She was pissed; Johns didn't blame her. He was pissed, too. And not just with himself, with the whole fucking situation. He'd thought he'd known what was going on when he and the other two had walked out to meet Richard B. Riddick: the escaped convict was going to bargain for a way off world, and Johns was going to play along until the chance came to turn the tables. After which he was going to interrogate the fucker about what had happened to his son, then turn the son of a bitch over to Santana. The bounty hadn't mattered; all he'd cared about had been the answers to his questions.

He supposed he had those answers, now – except that the bounty absolutely _did_ matter, because the tables had turned on _him_. It was going to be on his head now too, the minute the rest of the merc community found out what had just happened.

One fucking touch, that was all it had taken to wreck his life a second time. One touch, from the same man he'd always believed had murdered Billy. He'd reached down to grab Riddick by the shoulders after knocking the convict out with the butt of his rifle ... and in the process, his fingers had touched bare skin. No mistaking what had happened next, and no way to reject it either. Ten years of chasing Riddick, and this was how it ended: with a fire lit under Johns' skin and a sudden need to exterminate anyone who threatened him.

The Elementals had a lot to answer for, if fucking Riddick was supposed to be _his_ fucking Balance.

The historians claimed that the ethereal race had run into the first humans to leave Earth and been horrified at their irrational individuality; that they'd decided to 'fix' the problem by gifting the entire species with the ability to recognize, and bond to, a potential Balance at first touch. Like the old myths about humans originally having four arms, four legs, and two faces, except that their other half wasn't set in stone from birth, a match just happened when two people happened to match up. Balanced pairs weren't necessarily polar opposites or perfect reflections, but they were always at least complementary to each other – and never, ever completely incompatible. The colloquial term was 'soulmate', and as spread out as humanity was these days, most people only ever daydreamed about finding one. 

Most people, it turned out, were lucky. Because this was no daydream; it was a fucking _nightmare_. 

All Johns had been able to think in that first shocked moment of recognition was that he had to keep the situation under control, and Santana and Diaz represented a direct threat to that control. His reaction had been that quick, and that visceral; before he could manage to drag a few working brain cells back together, blood had already been splashed on the dusty soil. Maybe he could have fought the instincts enough to keep it nonlethal, if they'd been his men ... but if they'd been his men, they wouldn't have been dumb enough to attack the man controlling the only way off the planet in the first place. So now he had some decisions to make.

And not a lot of time to make them in. The closer the clouds approached, the more the hair stood up on the back of his neck; he was getting a distinct sense that Riddick had used the rainstorm's approach as a deadline for a reason. _It's the end you want to think about, now_. It fucking figured.

"Boss...?" Dahl's voice came again, this time without the faint background noise of a transmission. It only registered as Johns noticed that he'd heard the arrival of a hog, too – a sign of just how far he'd been thrown off his game by the revelation. He'd have to get over it quick; this was no time for his wits to go wandering.

He shook his head sharply, jarring his thoughts out of their frustrated circling, and looked up to meet his second's cautious gaze. Her eyes widened as she got a good look at him, and she sucked in a sharp breath.

"That noticeable, huh?" Johns concluded, managing a wry, bitter smile.

Dahl reached up to make sure the comm in her ear was turned off, then swallowed visibly. "Your _eyes_ , Boss. What the fuck happened out here?"

" _Riddick_ fucking happened." He shrugged fatalistically as he shut his comm off as well. "Guess they're not an eyeshine, after all. Ten years of chasing the man, and this is the first time I'd laid hands on him."

He let the sentence drop there, and she stared in shock as his meaning sank in, eyes widening in dismay. "You've gotta be shitting me. What is this, some kind of D-rate holovid?"

"I only wish," he chuckled darkly, gesturing to the ground at his feet. Near him, and not Riddick; the instincts were still settling. "Set the kit and the antidote down here; then I guess I'd better help you sling the bodies over the hog. It'll be a rough ride to fly them back, but the engine ought to be able to handle it."

All their years of partnership were in his eyes as she took that on board, though she didn't bother to argue with the orders. She always was a smart, pragmatic woman; it was why she'd made such a good second. Why she'd carry on all right, even without him ... though _fuck_ , he was going to miss her like a lost limb. Why a convict, of all people? No fucking way he could bring the man on board; he was just too recognizable.

Dahl glanced down at Riddick again, bleeding sluggishly from the forehead where Johns' rifle butt had struck him, then at the unconscious form of the dog-thing that had tried to defend its master from Santana, and sighed. "Fuck. All right. What do you want me to tell the others?"

They'd all seen Riddick walking up to the station from a distance; the largely flat steppe terrain had concealed nothing. No chance the ones left behind hadn't seen everything Dahl had, if not in as much detail. But for what came next? It might be possible to wrangle a little elbow-room, and he wouldn't even have to stretch the truth much to do it. Riddick should appreciate that ... if he didn't stab first and ask questions later.

"Tell 'em the truth. Santana reneged on our deal, and Diaz tried to back his play. If they'd succeeded, we'd _all_ have been stranded here, finding out what Riddick meant when he said no-one wants to be on this planet twenty-four hours from now. I'm staying back because we still need those nodes, the quicker the better, and I don't want to ask my questions with an audience. That ought to be enough of an explanation for Vargas and Luna, if our experience with these assholes was any example of their usual leadership style."

Dahl's mouth firmed into a hard line, and she crossed her arms beneath the shelf the backbrace made of her bosom. "And Moss and Lockspur?"

"Wait 'til you get 'em alone," he conceded. "The ship and crew are legally in your name, after mine. Put your radio on the backup channel, and I'll call you when I've got the node. You come out and take it, then bring back the official story – Riddick and I killed each other over the last one, disabled it somehow, and you're gone."

"But Boss...." She narrowed her eyes at him, studying his expression. "You're not even gonna fight it?"

Johns shook his head sharply. He'd had a long fucking run; and not much left to lose after Billy had failed to come home. He'd have had to leave the life sometime, either with his body shrink-wrapped in plastic like Rubio and Nunez, or left behind on some nameless world like his son's had been. The reminder burned like acid, but he hadn't reached the age he had in such a violent occupation without learning how to adapt to necessity. 

"What's the point? It's going to be as obvious to everyone else as it was to you, the second anyone gets a look at my eyes. This is the best scenario I can think of; the only way it doesn't all end with a bounty on my head too, before I even have a chance to adjust."

Dahl frowned, then nodded reluctantly. "I wouldn't report you; the guys wouldn't, either. But if you don't want us to take out Vargas and Luna...."

"They haven't done anything to deserve it ... that I know of. I guess this whole thing proves my lines are a little further out than I thought, but that's one I still refuse to cross." Johns rubbed his forehead, leaving unspoken what that implied about Riddick's lines as well, in context with the reason he'd been hunting him down all these years. "Don't worry about me none; if you can say nothing else about Riddick, you know he's a survivor."

Dahl let the subject drop then long enough to help him move the bodies. Then she paused for one last exchange before starting the hog again, frustration and reluctance in every line of her posture. 

"You really sure about this, Boss? They say this Balance shit is for life, but they don't say how long that's gotta be. The main reason most bonded die within days of their soulmate is because of a broken heart, not because it literally kills them; somehow, I don't think that'd be a problem for you. A pair of color contacts, and no one'd ever know the difference."

That was an even more tempting thought than getting rid of the last of Santana's crew ... or would have been, before Chance had thoroughly fucked him over. Johns gritted his teeth against the cognitive dissonance, then shook his head again, decisively. "Still need the nodes; still want those answers. And I gotta trust there's some _reason_ for it all, despite everything."

"Well, it's your funeral," Dahl quipped anemically, with a wry twist to her mouth. Then she reached awkwardly out to wrap her arms around him, layers of fabric and flexible armor trapped between them. Their friendship had never been a touchy one, but it had been a long one; a lot of unspoken things went into that hug, and he cleared his throat before it could get all emotional.

Then she turned and left him. With an injured dog, a homicidal and currently unconscious soulmate, and a ticking clock on his hands.

"This better be fucking worth it, Riddick," Johns murmured as the hog sped away, then opened the emergency kit and knelt between Riddick and his pet. He jabbed the antidote into Riddick's bare arm first; even a constitution as tough as his would take a little while to neutralize that much horse tranq. Then he turned to the animal, grateful that instinct had pushed him to risk turning his back on a still-dangerous Diaz to interrupt Santana in the middle of pulling the trigger. Riddick would be hard enough to deal with without adding grief-fueled rage to the mix; one of them struggling with setting aside vengeance was more than enough already.

He would never, ever in a million years, have killed a man unprovoked. So if their morals were supposed to be compatible ... he really, really didn't want to think about what that meant about Billy's death, in context.

He was pretty sure he was going to have to soon, though. The dog was whining softly by the time he was through making sure it wouldn't tear itself or anyone else up for the time being ... and so was Riddick, his rising anger igniting like a hungry fire in Johns' awareness. Lore said the Elementals hadn't intended to cripple humanity with their 'gift'; the emotional connection brought about by a Balance wasn't meant to be strong enough to distract in a time or focus-critical moment. But to Johns, it still felt like an alert siren blaring at the back of his mind, amplifying his own emotions like compounding sine waves.

"I know you're awake," he said firmly, moving to gather the scattered contents of the kit. "So fucking get up already; we need to head for those nodes before something _else_ goes drastically off course. Way your luck seems to run, I'd wager on that taking maybe an hour, two hours at most."

Riddick was still wearing his goggles, but Johns didn't need to see the silvery shine of his eyes to recognize the shift between the limp-dishrag sprawl of the convict's unconscious form to the tense stillness of a man peering up at him through darkened lenses. But all he said was four growled words. 

"You're in my head."

"Again, congratulations for figuring out the fucking obvious. You waiting for encouragement? Because at this point, you're more likely to get the back of my hand than a hand up, here. Don't exactly have an arm free to brace you anyway." He grunted under the weight of the drowsy dog-thing as he propped its head on his shoulder; the bullet seemed to have just scored the surface of its neck and glanced off the base of its skull without doing any vital damage, but it was in no shape to walk on its own yet, and like hell he was going to sit there waiting for Riddick to manage it.

"Then get the fuck out," Riddick snarled, every muscle straining as he staggered to his feet.

"What, you think I'm doing it for _fun_?" What the hell kind of bond education did they offer in the penal system, anyway? "Believe me, I'd leave you behind if I could. Which way are the nodes, Riddick?"

Riddick swayed slightly on his feet, a blank expression on his face entirely failing to conceal the confused suspicion boiling under the surface. "You're the one reading my mind, Johns," he shook his head, clumsily. "Why don't _you_ tell me?"

"I'm reading your mind exactly as much as you're reading mine," he scoffed in reply. They didn't have time for this; what the hell did Riddick think challenging him now was going to accomplish? "Get a grip; the longer we stand here where Vargas and Luna can see us, the more likely it is everything will go south, and _you_ were the one who told us there was a deadline. So get a fucking move on, asshole!"

Riddick seemed to register the presence of his dog at long last, hand coming up in an abortive gesture to reach toward the brindled fur draped over Johns' shoulder. Then he stiffened, making a low, indecipherable sound in his throat. He glanced away, taking in the blood splashed on the ground around them, then tilted his head at Johns. "Soulmates, then? Huh. Not what I was expecting."

He must have finally noticed the side-effects. "No _shit_ , Sherlock."

Riddick wiped absently at the broken skin on his forehead, then glanced down at his bloody fingers and snorted. "Always the hit you don't see coming," he commented, mouth twisting in a sardonic smile. Then he turned his back to Johns and started walking away from the station. "This way, then."

Johns knew he should just let it go at that and be grateful that Riddick had finally cooperated – but he'd been braced for a fight, not a capitulation, and Riddick's easy acceptance had caught him wrong-footed. "That's all you have to say?" he scoffed as he slung the strap of the emergency kit over his free shoulder and followed. " _Not what you were expecting_?"

"What, you waiting for me to say I didn't ghost your son?" Riddick shot a flat glance back at him. "Like you said, _congratulations on figuring out the fucking obvious._ You good to keep up, or are you gonna check out on me like he did?"

Fucking Riddick; fucking Elementals, promising _greater rationality_ and screwing everything up instead. What the hell was that supposed to even _mean_? "I just kicked over my whole _life_ for you, you fucking lunatic. Maybe I was hoping for a little reciprocation here. For example, Dahl gets my node; no negotiation on that point. And everything else, we fight out _afterward_."

"All my life, I been told you gotta have a soul to have a soulmate," Riddick replied, through a baring of teeth that could only charitably be called a smile. "Who says I'm the one with the problem? Maybe I'm just taking a moment to enjoy the schadenfreude."

"Big word for a man educated in the penal system," Johns replied, tartly.

"Who said that was my only education?" Riddick raised a brow. "Might want to check those assumptions of yours, merc."

It was no wonder the man's bounty was twice as high if you brought back just his head. Johns was surprised it wasn't even higher; had the issuer actually spent any time with him?

Though now that he actually thought about it....there just might be something more there that he'd overlooked. Slams wouldn't pay enough for men like Diaz and Santana to still pursue him so hard after losing half their group; the privately-run prisons funded their payouts from what the government paid _them_ for inmate upkeep, factored for hazard and length of stay. No government would pay a single credit for a proven corpse. So the issuer pretty much had to be an individual. And who'd want the man dead badly enough to whet the appetites of every merc in the sector? What had he done ... or what did he know that someone wanted buried?

Johns thought about the rumors he'd picked up amid the rebuilding on Helion Prime, and wondered. Nothing for month after month after that incident, and then the fresh sheet sent out with his picture, hinting that Riddick was still alive to be caught. What were the odds that the merc who managed it would be the only one with a reason to want to talk to the man before slitting his throat?

Riddick threw another glance over his shoulder, distracted maybe by Johns' shift of thought, and a shiver worked its way up Johns spine. Nevermind the odds of _that_ turn of events?

...Well, he'd been looking for a reason, hadn't he? Seemed like one might actually be there to be found.

 _If_ they managed to get off this rock without killing each other. "Fucking Elementals," he sighed, and pushed harder to keep up.

* * *

The dog-thing was making a more concerted effort to wriggle free by the time they reached a conspicuous formation of weatherworn rock, growling and digging sharp claws into Johns' armor. He let it push itself loose, scrambling to get its feet back under it, and wasn't surprised when it immediately turned on him, teeth bared in a vicious snarl.

"Hush," Riddick said, calling it over to him with a snap of fingers and a surge of affection that most definitely wasn't aimed at Johns. "Good effort, but he's not one of the ones you gotta watch out for."

"So sure of that, are you?" Johns couldn't help but reply, dropping the emergency kit and slinging his rifle as he examined their surroundings. "What makes me so different from the likes of Santana or Diaz?"

The place Riddick had led them to was back toward the hills, on more solid ground than the mostly-flat terrain near the merc station, and pretty much in the opposite direction of the incoming storm. A patch of recently-turned earth in the center of the formation suggested Riddick was on the up-and-up; but if there wasn't some other surprise in the offing, Johns would be surprised.

A point to the man's contention about his education; he had a positive genius for layering plans within plans and taking advantage of even the slightest of opportunities. There were some odd gaps in his early records, but just from what was available, it was clear his record of escapes owed as much to hard-earned skill as it did ridiculous luck. It was his sheer physicality that gave the impression otherwise, Johns suspected; the bulging muscles, the rough voice, the marked preference for up-close and bloody kills.

"You missed Santana's grand introduction," Riddick replied dryly, kneeling to give his pet a good scratch and check the seal-job Johns had done on its wound. "Had a bounty already on his ship when he landed. Told the Bible kid to cut her loose, then shot her through the chest just when she'd started to run. She died right in front of me, close enough to see the scars from the shackles and watch the light fade in her eyes."

Johns' stomach turned at that image, at the surge of anger beneath it, and he swallowed roughly. He couldn't begin to guess what Riddick was getting from him in that moment; he didn't want to sympathize with the bastard, but he could picture it all too clearly. 

"I told the others when we found Falco – I've never known you to take hostages. No rapes, and no kids on your sheet, either," he admitted, his own anger fading just a little more.

"I'm a predator," Riddick agreed, a curl of amusement coloring both his tone and his thoughts. "Take out threats; defend my turf. And protect the pack, on the rare occasion I've got one. It was a twelve-year-old girl on M-344/G, in case you're wondering. Thought I was cool ... and wasn't a fan of your son's morphine habit."

Johns made the executive decision right then that he didn't need to know any more. Whatever he'd thought before, no good could come of knowing every detail. Of imagining himself on that world in Riddick's place ... or Billy's.

"Well, since you've decided this turf isn't yours anymore ... perhaps we'd better get to digging up those nodes," he replied, stiffly.

Riddick let the subject drop with a smirk, then stuck his hand into the loose soil and came up with a shovel. "All right. I'll dig; you watch our backs. I hoped to be out of here before the rain hits, but I don't like the speed of that storm."

"Why?" Johns frowned. "I get that there's some reason you're concerned, but what is it that's coming?"

"Haven't taken a look yet?" Riddick shook his head at him, then stuck the blade of the shovel in the soil. "You got my eyes now; get up on a rock and put 'em to use."

Johns tore his eyes away from the smoothly shifting muscles in Riddick's back and shoulders, apparently no longer impaired by either the tranq or the blow to the head Johns had dealt him, and reluctantly turned to follow the suggestion. The steady bite of metal slicing through earth was a much needed reassurance; the sight that greeted him when he fixed his attention on the leading edge of the rain band, rather less so. 

The sun had started to set during their trek, its descent hurried along by the dark bank of cloud blocking its last rays, but he could see none of the usual range of golds, oranges, and russet reds that usually tinted the landscape in advance of nightfall; it was all washed out in shades of a purplish grey. What his new vision lacked in color, though, it seemed to make up for in sensitivity to movement ... and there was plenty of movement to be seen, just behind the gust front of the storm.

"What the fuck _are_ those things?" he asked, aghast, watching the horizon writhe. Suddenly, the predator restraints with the forty-two inch offset jaws made a hell of a lot more sense as an inventory item.

"A more efficient predator than you or me," Riddick replied, grimly. "Only took 'em one on one, before. That many? The big ones can bite through bone, hit hard enough to send you flying, and the little ones are poisonous enough to kill jackals the size of Escape Artist here before you even see 'em coming."

"Just _great_ ," Johns shook his head, and reluctantly felt his fury with the whole situation starting to tip over into amused resignation. There was a point when 'what the fuck' looped right back around into 'what the hell', and this day had definitely passed that threshold. 

"What did I say? An hour, maybe two; that's _definitely_ going to hit the station before we can get offworld. Especially if we keep to the subterfuge I arranged with Dahl. Though I guess it'll make it all the more believable that you and I are both dead, if she makes it back with just one node around the time the rain starts to fall."

The shift toward acceptance in Johns' emotions seemed to wrong-foot Riddick more than anything else had since he'd woken to their new reality; he paused in the middle of his shoveling to stare up at him, a frown furrowing his brow above the goggles.

"You're coming with me," he said, tone more an accusation than a question.

"Don't have enough juice to pay to have your idents scrambled, especially with the kind of heat you have on you," Johns shrugged. "What else did you expect me to do?"

"Even thinking...."

"Especially _knowing_ ," Johns cut him off before that sentence could go any farther, "that any Elemental we came across would be able to track us to each other. You're not who I'd have chosen for a Balance, Richard B. Riddick. But you're who I got."

"And you're just as much a predator as I am," Riddick concluded, certainty smoothing over the emotional turbulence that had been whipped up by his suspicions. "With a shiny badge on top, to keep the sheep from panicking."

He left the shovel sticking in the earth, then strode toward the outcropping Johns had chosen for his perch; the sudden urgency that filled him struck some cord deep in Johns in return, and he slid down off the rock to meet his new partner face to face.

They really wasn't much difference between their heights; Riddick was a hair taller, his muscles a little more ripped, while Johns was broader through the shoulder, built more for the straight-up fight than the ambush. But there was no arguing, up close and personal, that they were fairly closely matched. And as Riddick reached up to tear off his goggles, certain other instincts Johns had been ignoring chose that moment to kick in.

"To catch a wolf, you send a wolf," he acknowledged, swallowing dryly as a low heat started to settle in his gut. It was as much about the other man's body language as all the exposed, sweaty, tightly muscled flesh on display; it had been a long damned time since the last rec stop.

Riddick's mouth curved in a more appreciative grin as he closed the distance between them, not stopping until he was close enough to reach out and touch. "A self-aware wolf at that," he agreed, inspecting Johns from close range. Those shining eyes flicked over him from head to toe, taking him in; then he reached out to wrap his fingers around Johns' upper arms, backing him into the base of the rock formation.

Johns went with the push, dizzied by the redoubling of the emotional current through the skin-on-skin contact. The sine wave comparison from earlier flickered briefly back through his mind; then Riddick's mouth was on his, his thigh between Johns' own, and the rising tide of lust drowned coherent thought.

The kiss lasted only a few seconds; like a test, or some kind of zeroing the clock re-introduction. Then Riddick stepped back, a more thoughtful expression on his face. "You really want to go on the run with me. Without even asking where I'm headed next."

"Not so much want, as will; though as I guess you can tell, I'm getting there." He smirked, remembering the word he'd seen scrawled in the cave, and realized he was actually having _fun_ trading wordplay with the asshole. "I'm bright enough to see the writing on the wall ... in more than one sense of the word."

Riddick blinked, as the reference sank in; then he shook his head. "Had an Elemental corner me once, talking about balance. Guess I should have listened more at the time. All right then, merc; we'll give your way a try. I'll even swear to leave the rest of your crew alone."

"I'd be much obliged," Johns replied, automatically.

Riddick chuckled in response, voice warm and low; then he stepped away, picking the shovel back up.

Johns shook his head, feeling a stirring of sharp-edged hope as he turned back to the horizon.


End file.
